Barry, James, 1741-1806

Irish historical painter.

James Barry (1741-1806) was a history painter, printmaker, and author. At 22, he exhibited his picture The Baptism of the King of Cashel by St. Patrick at the Dublin Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. Edmund Burke and William Burke became his patrons, arranging for him to study in Europe. When Barry returned to England, he was invited to join The Royal Academy. Barry became his own printmaker, publisher, and distributor by 1776, and was also a writer, especially concerning the state of the arts in England, as demonstrated by his first book, An Inquiry into the Real and Imaginary Obstructions to the Acquisition of the Arts in England (1775). In 1782, he became professor of painting at the Royal Academy. However, Barry's last major publication, A Letter to the Dilettanti Society of 1798, appealed to the Society to promote the arts to compensate for what he considered to be the Royal Academy's lack of leadership, and in which he inveighed angrily against his colleagues. For these and other remarks in his lectures, he was expelled from the Royal Academy on 15 April 1799. He died in poverty in 1806.

James Barry (1799-1865), army medical officer and transvestite, was born Margaret, the youngest daughter of Mary Anne Bulkley and the niece of the artist James Barry. In 1809 Mrs. Bulkley settled in Edinburgh with the 10-year-old "James Barry," who matriculated as a literary and medical student at the university. She received her MD in 1812, becoming both the youngest and the first woman in Great Britain to graduate in medicine. Barry arrived in the Cape in 1816, and in 1817 was appointed physician to the household of the governor, Lord Charles Somerset. During the winter of 1819 she paid a secret visit to the island of Mauritius; it has been suggested that she had become pregnant by Somerset and went to Mauritius to give birth. Barry was promoted to staff surgeon in 1827, and in 1828 she was appointed to Mauritius. In 1858 she became inspector-general of hospitals. After contracting severe influenza in Canada, she returned to England in 1859 and retired on half pay. She died in 1865; her death certificate lists her as a man.